Nowadays, chief information officers (CIOs) are charged with more than keeping their organization’s IT operations up and running, according to a new study from IT staffing specialist Robert Half Technology. In a survey of 2,500 CIOs in the U.S.

Deep Learning, the term, is somewhat recent and its popularity is most definitely increasing. At the root, the concept has been around for probably over 40 years under the umbrella or Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). Although the idea was fantastic, the applications were limited by the availability of computing power. With the evolution of GPU cards (Graphics Processing Units), where each card packs thousands of core, deep learning is becoming more practical and applicable.

With their large scale data centers, Google and Amazon have both been able to polish their deep learning platforms. With everyone from the financial industry to healthcare now trying to research deep learning implementations for their own gains, both players are competing for attention.

Meanwhile, Amazon is coming out with its own ML platform (DSSTNE, available on GitHub). You can read more on this at Geekwire.

Like with every new shiny toy, efforts tend to be overdone at first and we may see a few “Deep Learning” vending machines before things stabilize. And although it is hard for me to predict who will will the ML arms race, I think deep learning is definitely here to stay. It should soon graduate from “buzz” word to common computing practice.

Is this high profile and high value project failing to deliver a marketing and image blow to Kickstarter? Can it be interpreted as a sign that the bubble is starting to weaken and show its age. Or is this simply bad news about a single KS project?

I have a been a big Google fan and always knocked on Microsoft but they made interesting points. Google does spend a fair amount of time on less relevant projects though in my mind, it’s always been their approach.

They develop concepts and work on projects and see what sticks. Their focus is often purposely not on popular concepts. One reality remains, Adsense revenues are declining:

The knock-on effect: Adsense is declining and Google’s search market share is currently at its lowest point in seven years. Like Microsoft had done with Windows and Office, Google understandably still tightly holds onto the duo as its primary revenue pillars but the future implies only further slow decline with no obvious escape route.

Microsoft is trying to improve and making changes but they still on several important aspects. Their mobile game is irrelevant for one. Although they try to be an online and cloud provider, their offerings are often kludgy and integrate poorly with the desktop tools. Not to mention the annoying fragmentation in the Office 365 offerings (Personal, Small Business, Enterprise, etc with no transition path between the offerings).

Microsoft is a long way from being in a position to consider this ruthless second stage (or maybe not), but the first moves are well underway. The once ludicrous idea that Outlook and Windows Calendar could cause disruption on iOS or Android is now no laughing matter as Microsoft bought and effectively rebadged best-of-breed email and calendar apps Acompli and Sunrise.

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This is a great 60 minutes piece on China’s housing bubble. The middle class is turning towards real-estate for investment so builders are constantly putting up new buildings, developments and cities. But with only a privileged few buying multiple apartments, there is nobody to occupy these new developments who remain ghost towns for months and years.

As a side question: what would happen to the world markets if the Chinese economy was to implode?

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An excellent article by Jeff Weiner at LinkedIn about managing email. Having done IT for several firms, I’ve seen it all. From people who simply can’t keep track, with Inboxes full of thousands of unread messages, to people who over process and over categorize, ending up with one category for each thread and spending 75% of their time managing emails.

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I have recently discovered Quandl, which, per their website description:

[…] has indexed millions of time-series data from over 400 sources. All of Quandl’s datasets are open and free. You can download any Quandl dataset in any format that you want. You can also visualize, save, share, authenticate, validate, upload, index, merge and transform data. Our long-term goal is to make all the numerical data on the internet easy to find & easy to use.

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Last time I changed job, it meant an increase in commute (from 5 minutes to an hour) which also meant I would not see my kids every morning. So I picked up the habit (since then lost mind you) of setting the table for their breakfast and leaving them a note, wishing them a good day. Who knew that from a simple note, things would evolve to teaching encryption.
Of course, the simple note grew old over time so I started looking for alternatives. After trying the multi-color notes and various “analog” mediums, I turned to Bamboo Paper on the iPad and that provide several options. I also played around with a Boogie Board Rip and that provided an interesting alternative for a few days but it was short lived.Read More …